The Campaign is brimming with shrewd dumbness

Will Ferrell is banging a trashy chick in a porta-potty and he has the best dumb look on his face ever. He’s so good at playing an amoral, conceited, dimwit Democratic congressman in his new movie, The Campaign, you wish he was a politician for real. Then we’d still have terrible people making terrible decisions for the planet while snorting Timbits off crack whores or campaign workers or Kardashians or Adam Sandler in drag, but at least they’d be hilarious.

Because he says the words America, Jesus, and freedom a lot to his constituents, Ferrell’s character, Cam Brady, has never been opposed in his North Carolina district. He also has good hair. “My hair could lift a car off a baby if it had to,” he says. Lessons for success, people. He’s married with kids but doesn’t bother to hide his icky doings with a yoga instructor. Sorry, yogis, ew, I mean aerobics instructor. Then some billionaire evildoer brothers (Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow) decide to take family man Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), a naive, curiously sexless underachiever from a wealthy Republican clan, and run him against Cam.

Really stupid, funny things happen that’ll make you laugh when you’re thinking about them later, alone and scared in the world. Galifianakis is also pretty great, but his character isn’t the true moron here. At least Marty gets to shoot Cam with a crossbow. Hunting “accidents” rule. But other than ignoring Seinfeld’s “no hugging, no learning” rule, director Jay Roach and the writers give Ferrell campaign-trail run-ins with a baby—don’t watch the trailer; it seriously spoils it—a rattlesnake, and Uggie the dog from The Artist, along with other shrewd dumbness.

Oh, and Cam says, “Aloe vera be thy name” when he’s reciting the Lord’s Prayer. At least he got that right.